1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image-recording method and apparatus for recording an image of an original document on a recording medium such as film and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for placing additional information relevant to the image of the original document adjacent the image thereof and for withholding the information when the image of the document is deemed defective somehow.
2. Description of the Related Art
Image-recording cameras for sequentially recording images of originals such as various types of documents on a reduced scale on a strip of microfilm are known.
Of numerous photographic microfilm recording devices or microfilm cameras, the microfilm camera has been suggested in which, while the size of a single frame in the microfilm corresponds to the size of a document to be recorded on the microfilm, both of a single-size image and a double-size image can be photographically recorded. In this type system, for retrieving purposes, an image marking is also photographically recorded on the microfilm at a location in the vicinity of and peripheral to each image recorded on the microfilm.
As is well known to those skilled in the art, images recorded on the microfilm are so miniature that, in most cases, unless use is made of a microfilm reader or printer or combined reader and printer, what is expressed in the microfilmed image cannot be legible. Therefore, when one or some of the microfilmed images are desired to be viewed through the microfilm reader or to be copied through the printer, a controller-based retrieval is generally carried out to locate such one or some of the microfilmed images. More specifically, an operator of, for example, the microfilm reader has to input, into a retrieval system, an address of one of the microfilmed images which is desired to be viewed through a screen of the microfilm reader, so that the retrieval system can browse the microfilm to locate such one of the microfilmed images and then to cause it to be displayed through the reader screen. The retrieval system while browsing the microfilm counts the number of image markings, one for each microfilmed image, and issues a stop command to interrupt the transport of the microfilm reader when the count of the image markings coincides with a particular value assigned by the input address, thereby enabling the particular microfilmed image to be displayed through the reader screen.
With one image marking photographically recorded for double-size images as well as single size images such a retrieval process could encounter myriad problems. Therefore, the retrieval on a page basis requires a preparatory calculation to determine how many pages are to be transported to a desired page of the microfilmed transcript to locate the desired page, followed by a manual procedure to bring the image of the desired page in register with the reader screen.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,202,724 addressed this problem by providing a microfilm camera wherein, for each double-size image, two image markings spaced a predetermined distance from each other can be photographically recorded on the microfilm thereby facilitating the subsequent image retrieval.
A problem not addressed by the above invention is what happens when an operator of a microfilm camera determines that the last exposure was bad. Bad exposures may include such things as a comer of the document to be photographed is turned over covering some information on the document. The document may not have been properly placed on the copyboard correctly. It may have been skewed or was partially outside of the exposure area. The operator's hand may have been in the exposure area when the exposure was made. In any of these instances, the operator could readily recognize that a bad exposure was made and make a second exposure of the document during the next exposure period after correcting the problem.
Thus, it can be seen that in the first situation, not enough image marks were being applied for each document photographed because double documents only received one image mark for two pages. As a result of the bad exposure situation, image marks were being placed adjacent unwanted exposures. Accordingly, the image count on the roll of film would have to be modified during the retrieval process but problems can be encountered depending how many errors appear on a film roll and if they are grouped together or spread throughout the film. If they are grouped together, the unwanted images may be removed and the film spliced; however, if they are spread throughout the roll of film, the image count must be corrected differently, depending on what portion of the film roll one is searching. Trying to eliminate these error counts to insure accurate retrieval of the desired image is cumbersome and involves errors being made during retrieval or requires a device which is complex in construction and inefficient.